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Electrical Safety Tips for the Holiday Season

Posted on Feb 3, 2016 8:20am PST

When decorating your home for the holidays, you might be tempted to cut
corners and take risks with your electrical outlets and plugs for the
sake of making your house look beautiful. You should resist the urge to
do this because, if you’re not careful, you could run into serious
electrical problems. Before you start decorating, you should inspect all
of your decorations’
electrical plugs near Columbus to make sure they are in good working order. You should also follow these
helpful tips.

Do Not Plug Too Many Decorations into Your Electrical Outlets

If you have a lot of decorations outside of your home, you are going to
need somewhere to plug all of them in. While it might be convenient to
pick one of your electrical outlets to plug all of your decorations in,
it can also be extremely dangerous. By overloading a single outlet with
multiple electrical plugs, you will increase the chances of a fire taking
place. You should only plug one high-wattage decoration into each of your
electrical outlets.

Use Outdoor Extension Cords When Decorating the Exterior of Your Home

Using extension cords to set up decorations in your front yard is OK, provided
you use extension cords that
are specifically labeled for outdoor use. These types of extension cords will not malfunction if they get wet and
will not shock you. Regular extension cords, on the other hand, may present
you with problems if you attempt to use them outdoors. For added protection,
you should use electrical tape to seal any plugs outside to further reduce
the risk associated with using outdoor extension cords.

Make Sure Your Holiday Lights Contain Certification Labels

Using holiday lights that are not certified by a laboratory like Underwriters
Laboratories (UL) can be extremely dangerous. Often times, homeowners
will purchase cheap lighting options to save money, but these types of
lights aren’t always certified and are therefore not always safe.
You want to make sure you are using certified lights that are sold by
retailers you trust.